Home Help: Prepare your deck for summer entertaining

Weekly home and garden rail, with tips for prepping your deck, advice on picking a new microwave, new kitchen and bath trends, and more.

Home Improvement: Revitalize your deck for summer

Now is the time to get outside and prepare outdoor living spaces for the entertainment season ahead.

While sunny days are perfect for fertilizing the lawn, planting flowers and laying mulch, don't waste those gray, overcast days. One task that can be tackled on a dreary day is prepping and cleaning your deck.

Below are simple steps to help achieve great-looking results that last:

1. Gather your tools and materials. Plan to have the following within reach as you prep your deck: Broom or leaf blower, ladder (for decks off ground), rags, tarps, buckets for mixing, synthetic brushes (2 to 4 inches), rollers and cleaning products.

2. Check your surfaces. To ensure your deck is both safe and beautiful, be sure to inspect the area for bad wood, dry rot, loose nails, loose spindles and broken boards. Replace boards as needed and secure any loose nails and spindles.

3. Prepare yourself, the deck and the surrounding area. Make sure you take all safety precautions before embarking on your deck-cleaning project. Wear gloves, safety glasses and old clothing - shorts are not recommended. Before starting, cover any areas you want to protect, wet down plants and shrubs, and wet your deck surface with water.

4. Clean, scrub and renew. Work the cleaner into the wood, working from the bottom up to reduce streaking. Be sure to keep the surface wet with water and let the wood cleaner stand for 20 to 30 minutes before rinsing. Once cleaned, wood should dry for at least 48 hours before applying stain.

5. Stain. A properly cleaned deck should be stained within 30 days. After 30 days, a light cleaning with bleach and water before staining will do the trick.

-- ARA

How-to: Pick a microwave

With a wide variety of available models and options, microwaves are designed to meet a diverse range of needs. Consider the following questions before buying:

- Which microwave style best fits in with your existing kitchen?

- Are you preparing small meals or large family feasts?

- Do you want to crisp and brown food in addition to microwaving?

- Will you use it to primarily warm and reheat food or prepare entire meals?

- What special features would you like to have available?

-- Home Depot

Decorating Tip: New kitchen and bath trends

The National Kitchen & Bath Association recently gave awards in its design trends competition. You can draw inspiration from these three top designs:

2. Beverage stations: This area usually comprises an undercounter refrigerator and wine refrigeration, as well as a coffeemaker. It also may sometimes have a smaller bar area.

3. Scaling of elements: Shapes, actual and implied textures, along with the placement of fixtures are being used to create scale. An irregularly textured pebbled wall, marbled surface in glass tile, reflective metallic material, or symmetrically hung pendant lighting directs the eye around the room and contributes to a balanced space.

-- National Kitchen & Bath Association

Home-Selling Tip: Flowers add quick curb appeal

Displaying flowers in a planter’s box is an easy way to immediately enhance your home’s curb appeal. These flower boxes often fit nicely on a porch, patio or windowsill; marigolds, pansies, snapdragons and alyssum are colorful and easy to deal with.

-- www.realestateabc.com

Did You Know …

For seniors looking to buy retirement property, Bend, Ore., offers the best value, according to a U.S. News and World Report analysis.

Garden Guide: Beat those cucumber beetles

Cucumber beetles are a double whammy in your garden. They open wounds as they suck juices out of leaves, and this creates access for the wilt virus that they incubate in their tiny little bodies.

After a gardener plants cucumbers, the beetles lay eggs at the base of the plants. So how to stop them?

- Since they only go through one life cycle per growing season and are plant specific, you could skip growing cucumbers for a couple of years to draw down the population.

- Wait until mid-July to bed your plants. The beetles typically aren’t around later in the season.

- If you do decide to grow cucumbers, lay down black plastic mulch. The beetle’s body has yellow-green and black stripes, so you’ll be able to easily spot them, pick them up and drown them in a coffee can.

-- Peter Coppola, principle master gardener from Burlington, Mass.

Backyard Buddies: Keep bunnies out of the garden

Rabbits are pretty cute, but their cuddliness disappears when you notice they’re chowing down in your garden. Here are a couple of tips from Scotts Miracle-Gro for deterring the bunnies.

- Set up a fence: Enclose vulnerable plants with a 1 ½-inch mesh chicken wire fence that should be 2 feet high and buried 3 to 4 inches under the soil.

- Use dried bloodmeal: This dried, powdered blood often used as a high-nitrogen fertilizer can be sprinkled near the plants to repel rabbits. Just be sure to reapply every few days during wet weather.

GateHouse News Service

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.